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When any government spends badly, progressives lose: Sears

When it comes to spending tax dollars, voters trust is low so they need to demand the politicians they support do better — especially progressives

"Harperites, despite their loud claims of fiscal rectitude, were pork barrel politicians of the first order, wasting boatloads of cash on everything from naval ships to public sector technology services," writes Robin Sears.

By Robin V. Sears

Sun., Sept. 25, 2016

Progressive politicians, including former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Finance Minister Ed Balls, along with many others in Canada and the U.S., admit ruefully that voters’ lack confidence in their ability to spend prudently and effectively. Even their own voters’ support for action on issues they care about is undermined as a result.

Whether it is a carbon tax or health spending, many voters who agree on the need for action on climate change or improvements in health care feel conflicted. The constant drumbeat of media coverage on wasted public dollars helps create broad and deep skepticism about the public sector’s most basic levels of competence.

On ensuring that public expenditure is well-monitored and that outcomes are fairly measured, there is a widening credibility gap between political promise, performance and public perception.

Too many progressive activists sneer at this challenge as merely the product of right-wing attacks on the role of government and the waves of revulsion created by their conservative media chorus.

They do have a case.

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Conservatives in power consistently fail to deliver better government performance and waste similar amounts of public funds. They just focus on different projects and then fail at them. Progressives’ failures on green energy and job creation are more than matched by Conservative defence boondoggles and their thinly veiled corporate welfare. Even the Harperites, despite their loud claims of fiscal rectitude, were pork barrel politicians of the first order, wasting boatloads of cash on everything from naval ships to public sector technology services.

But here’s the rub: in every case, progressives lose.

Decades of opinion research confirm it is progressives who suffer when governments’ misspend — even if they are conservative governments! So if progressive activists’ bristle at criticism of the efficacy of government spending, as merely right-wing sloganeering, they need to give their heads a shake.

As it is the centre-left that believes in and campaigns on the essential role of government as agents of change on social justice or climate change, there is a real problem if even their own voters don’t believe their governments are competent to deliver on that vision.

Sadly, the evidence that their skepticism is not merely the product of conservative propaganda continues never stops coming.

The Ontario Auditor-General’s investigators were savage in their assessment of the gap between the government’s green promise and energy performance. Bonnie Lysyk’s team concluded that Ontario taxpayers have been unnecessarily dinged for an additional $37 billion dollars over eight years, and face another $133 billion in wasted spending over the next 16 years. Her predecessors were equally savage on the Harris government and Premiers BobRae, David Peterson and Bill Davis before them.

Now this is a political gold mine for NDP leader Andrea Horwath and Consevative leader Patrick Brown in the short term, as the province heads into election season. But the government’s evident fiscal incompetence — as judged by their own Auditor-General — has a deeper and more worrying and long-lasting consequence. It adds one more layer of suspicion to any reasonable voter’s doubts about whether to trust any politician to spend any money on anything!

So flail away at the numbers, rile the troops in anger at Queen’s Park’s profligacy, and harvest bushels of angry votes, if you are an opposition politician. But if you are a progressive — a union leader, a politician or an activist — don’t then dismiss critics of the public sector’s actual performance as dim bulb Fox News dumbos.

Admit that voters have a right to be angry at such failures. Layout in credible terms how you would improve outcomes. Pledge to put your career on the line based on your delivery of that performance as assessed by the Auditor General. And make it clear to public sector leaders that there are consequences for incompetence, that impunity for failing to manage public revenues with due care will no longer be on offer.

Let Patrick Brown bellow that the problem is government itself, but don’t join him there. Force him to match your plan for better management with his own. If he offers the usual conservative pablum about cleaning up corruption, jump on him to prove it. Conservatives love to denounce conspiracy, corruption and cronyism in public spending. But as Napoleon sagely observed, “Never credit conspiracy, what simple incompetence can adequately describe.”

Progressives need to convincingly disprove Ronald Reagan’s great aphorism, “The most frightening words in the English language –‘I’m from the government, I’m here to help.” Progressive governments need to deliver, better.

Robin V. Sears, a principal at Earnscliffe and a Broadbent Institute leadership fellow, was an NDP strategist for 20 years.

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